Tag: Rohingya

Pittsburgh: Language barriers complicate refugee mental health treatment

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A radio station reporter has discovered that Pittsburgh, PA has taken a lot of refugees in need of health treatment (including mental health treatment) that they may not be getting.  I’ll bet it’s happening where you live too, and partly because no one is available to translate for the mental health provider.

Esar Met was not normal in the camp. If a reporter figured that out, surely the US State Dept. knew.

The issue of cities and counties being responsible for appropriate interpreters came up the other day when we wrote about the Utah murder case where the Salt Lake City police must have figured any Burmese person would do to communicate with the newly arrested Esar Met.  Met is a Muslim, probably a Rohingya.  If he is Rohingya he speaks a Bengali dialect.

So, think about it, according to federal law, local governments are required to provide interpreters, not just in law enforcement cases, but when helping refugees get the appropriate medical treatment and in the hundreds of languages and dialects spoken by refugees.

Increasingly, we are hearing of mental health problems in the refugee community going unattended.  Add the cost of all this (treatment and translators) when determining if yours is to be a “welcoming” community for refugees.

The US State Department resettles refugees with mental problems as they surely knew Esar Met was not normal.

In the Utah rape/murder case an article in the Salt Lake Tribune in 2008 tells us this about the accused murderer (below).  Interestingly his mother did not want to come to America, but the US State Department figured Met would make a good addition to a multicultural America—help diversify Utah!

A challenged son » About a mile away, people at Mae La knew Esar Met was not normal. He often sat alone, talking and laughing to himself in the Muslim section of the camp where his family lived. Or he played with children years younger, shooting rubber bands in the camp’s narrow lanes, flicking marbles across the rocky, dirt patches that were his neighbors’ yards.

He was the eldest of eight children, but when he argued with his younger brothers, he was the one to cry.

As a boy, he could not remember what he learned in class. His mother, Ra He Mar, knew her son was not very smart and worried he might become even slower as he grew older. After he had to repeat second grade, she let him drop out of school.

Friends told her the family should find someone to “check his brain,” but Esar’s parents thought they couldn’t afford to have him tested.

I’m surprised there is no insanity plea in the case yet, maybe it is still coming.

Reporter Erika Beras: no system in place when refugees are new to the town.

Back to Pittsburgh where there is NO SYSTEM IN PLACE for dealing with mental health issues and language barriers.

From 90.5 WESA (NPR in Pittsburgh), thanks to reader Joanne:

Refugees to the region face a number of challenges, unfamiliarity with a different language is even more complicated when trying to obtain health care.

90.5 WESA Behavioral Health Reporter Erika Beras is embarking on a month-long series on the challenges refugees face in the Pittsburgh area to obtain health care. She says her interest in the topic was sparked by the high population of refugees in Pittsburgh.

“The refugee community here has grown and grown. And in that time I’d been talking to providers and I’d been in different situations at specialty courts and I keep hearing stories about different refugees who have come in with different issues and how people are struggling to meet their needs. They don’t quite have a system in place after the first few months a refugee is in town.”

Mental health challenges throughout the US:

As Project Editor for the Reporting on Health Collaborative, William Heisel also finds the system to be often unprepared or overwhelmed by immigrant mental health cases.

“When you’re talking about refugees, they’re coming with acute needs…Refugees are coming from conflicts that most of us will never experience and so they, in addition to having the trauma they need to get over, they have language barriers that make it difficult for them to access health care, many of them have low income status, they’re disconnected from their communities and so we are seeing this throughout the U.S. as a pretty big challenge.”

So who is responsible for refugees when they first arrive in Pittsburgh?   Catholic Charities, Jewish Family & Children Services and AJAPO (Acculturation for Justice, Access & Peace Outreach) (here).   Ms. Beras needs to start her investigation right here—with these three federal contractors.

For ambitious readers, this is our 190th post on health problems and refugees.  See Health issues category here.

University of Wisconsin hosts conference on discrimination against Muslim Rohingya

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Nigerian woman carried from church which had been attacked by Muslims

And, they claim the Rohingya of Burma are the “most persecuted people in our time.” 

I suspect the Christians of the Middle East (Syria, Iraq) and Africa (Egypt, Nigeria, Central African Republic) might beg to differ.

Here is the story at Eurasia Review:

The first international conference in the USA on the plight of the Rohingya people of Myanmar – “Stop Genocide and Restore Rohingya’s Citizenship Rights in Myanmar” – was held in the campus of University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee on December 14, 2013. It was jointly hosted by the Burmese Rohingya American Friendship Association (BRAFA) and the Rohingya Concern International (RCI). The conference opened with a welcome speech from BRAFA’s chairman – Mr. Shaukhat Kyaw Soe Aung (MSK Jilani) and Dr. Chia Vang of the Ethnic Studies program at the university. The program was conducted by Mr. Mohiuddin Yosuf, President of the RCI and Chief Coordinator of the conference organizing committee. I was invited as a speaker. Amongst others, the speakers included – Professor Greg Stanton of the Genocide Watch (George Mason University), Mr. Nurul Islam of ARNO (UK), Sheikh Ziad Hamdan of Islamic Society of Milwaukee….

[….]

The Rohingya people, who mostly live in the western Rakhine state of Myanmar, are the most persecuted people in our time.

The conference called upon the government of Burma (aka Myanmar) to do the following:

 The Government of Myanmar to stop persecution, discrimination and dehumanizing of Muslims, including repealing laws and policies that enact or contribute to the persecution of Muslims and other targeted groups within Myanmar.

The Government of Myanmar to crack down on anti-Muslim violence against Rohingya and other Muslims.

I sure hope the University’s ethnic studies department will soon host a program on Muslim violence toward Christians on several continents!

For new readers who might ask why do we follow the Rohingya issue so closely?   We have been following the drum beat (the PR campaign!) for over five years now as we have watched the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and other of the federal resettlement contractors pushing to resettle Rohingya in your towns and cities.  So far the number is small, and we only know from news accounts that Muslim Burmese are mixed in with the thousands of other religious groups from Burma.   The US State Department does not release to the public the religious breakdown of refugees resettled in the US, although they do track those statistics.

See our extensive Rohingya Reports category, here.

Photo is posted at ACT for America Houston, some other photos are more gruesome.

The OIC does not need an office in Burma (Myanmar)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
No OIC! No Sharia Law! Take Foreign Bengalis to your country! Monks protest in Sittwe last Friday

But, they sure would like one. 

It is my view that it would serve no purpose other than to create a political agitation foothold in the largely Buddhist country.  If the rich countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation want to send humanitarian aid (food and supplies) to their fellow Muslims, let them do it through established international channels!

My alerts this morning are filled with Ihsanoglu crying stories, but here is a surprisingly (slightly) more balanced story written by Nizam Ahmed at The Financial Express (emphasis is mine):

US Ambassador Derek Mitchell was hanging around during the OIC visit according to The Financial Express.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) urged Myanmar to allow opening a country office in Naypyitaw so that the organisation could cooperate and contribute to socio-economic development programmes in the Buddhist-majority country, diplomatic sources said in Dhaka Saturday.

The call was made during official level talks between an OIC delegation and Myanmar officials in the capital of the Southeast Asian country Thursday, the second day of a four-day visit.

The delegation led by OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu concluded the visit Saturday after assessing the level of human rights abuse against minority Muslim Rohingyas, the sources said.

However the delegation while visiting camps of homeless people, mostly Rohingya Muslims, displaced during the communal riots in western Rakhine state over the past one year, met noisy protests of ethnic Buddhists in Sittwe, the capital of the state Thursday.

About 3,000 Buddhists led by monks staged the protest when the OIC delegation visited different camps of displaced Rohingyas and met local officials in the Rakhine state (formerly Arakan), bordering Bangladesh.

However Rohinygas welcomed the delegation comprising senior officials of the respective foreign ministries of seven member countries namely Bangladesh, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who visited the camps, said a senior official at the ministry of foreign affairs in Dhaka.

The ethnic Buddhists staged the protest as they feel that the international aid groups are biased for Muslims in Myanmar, he said. [yes they are!—ed]

Now this is unbelievable!  For the first time in a very long time someone actually mentions that the latest upheaval resulted from the rapes and murders of  Buddhist girls by Muslims!

Rakhine state was the scene of communal clashes between Muslims and ethnic Buddhists last year that left some 200 mostly Rohingya Muslims dead and 140,000 others displaced.   [Rarely does anyone mention that Buddhists died in the clashes too!  Some Muslims were killers as well, but you would never know it from western media reports!—-ed]

The riot that erupted last year over alleged rape of two women by Muslims, opened up an old wound of sectarian animosity and hatred between the two communities.

Here is one more point of fact rarely mentioned these days.  Buddhists claim the Rohingya are largely illegal migrants who have come over from Bangladesh in modern times.

Myanmar Buddhists consider Rohingya Muslims illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, brought over by the British when they ruled over colonial India and Myanmar, also known as Burma. The Rohingyas say, in response, that they have lived in the country for generations.

The protest photo is from this story.   I loved the banner telling the OIC to take the ‘Bengalis’ (Rohingya) to their countries.  That is exactly what I’ve been saying!

As I said yesterday:

Editors note:  Pay attention!  This is not some faraway problem—it will be yours in the West when they start pushing in a big way for the resettlement of Rohingya to your towns!

This past May the US Conference of Catholic Bishops implored the US State Department to bring MORE Rohingya to America.

Anyone want to write a book?  See our previous 160 posts in our Rohingya Reports category.  LOL!  We have your research done!

Burmese champion of human rights doesn’t take the Muslim Rohingya side and it steams them

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Hillary (and Huma!) must surely be unhappy with Aung San su Kyi on the Rohingya issue!

Aung San Suu Kyi continues to be beaten up in the western media for refusing to condemn her co-religionists in the on-going conflict between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in Burma (aka Myanmar).

And, why should you, living in American cities and towns, care what is going on in Burma?

Because we have been resettling tens of thousands of Burmese, largely Christian refugees for years.  In FY2013 we resettled 16,299 refugees from Burma (how many were Burmese Muslims?).

Increasingly there will be Muslim Rohingya among them especially if the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has its way.

I don’t have the time or energy to go back through the controversy, but I can assure you there is blame to be shared and the Rohingya are not pure as the driven snow as this Rohingya author (at the Huffington Post) would have you believe.  In my view, Aung San Suu Kyi is correct when she gave an interview to the BBC and did this:

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s interview with the BBC during her visit to the UK, has shocked many of her admirers. Despite being repeatedly pressed to do so, she repeatedly avoided giving a clear unequivocal condemnation of the anti-Muslim violence that is engulfing Burma.

Author Tun Khin can barely contain himself.  If it quacks like a duck!

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi also started talking about global Muslim power, as if this is some kind of threat to Burma? To hear a Nobel Peace Prize winner talking in the same way about Islam as bigots and racists is very disappointing. There are conspiracy theories about a global Muslim conspiracy to take over Burma, but these kind of things are spread by crazy people on Facebook. It is not what you expect from a University educated leader of a democracy movement. Instead of dismissing these claims as the dangerous nonsense they are, she gave them credibility in the eyes of many Burmese.

Count me among the crazy people!

We have 157 previous posts in our Rohingya Reports category, here, for anyone who wants to get the full picture going back 6 years on the growing conflict.  You will note that we have begun resettling Rohingya to American cities despite earlier reluctance by the State Department to do so.

Clamp-down on illegal boats seems to have cooled Rohingya plans to make a run on Australia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Gosh, could strict border enforcement work!

For new readers, the Rohingya are Muslims, some of whom have lived in Burma, others in Bangladesh.  They are often called “stateless” by the human rights industrial complex which has made them a cause celebre in a public relations campaign we have followed for over five years.   We have a category specifically for Rohingya posts, here (156 previous posts!)

Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, second from right, is quoted often in support of Rohingya.

 

Australians, fed up with the thousands of mostly Muslim illegal migrants coming to their shores in recent years, has elected a government which is sending signals that it won’t be a push-over as some recent governments have been on the subject of illegal immigration.

Here is an article in The Irrawaddy which reports that Rohingya people (already in their own “cultural zones” of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bangladesh) are now having second thoughts about trying to reach Australia.  Emphasis below is mine.

KUALA LUMPUR — Australia’s clampdown on refugees and migrants trying to reach the country’s shores by boat has prompted uncertainty among Rohingya who, facing state oppression and attacks by Arakanese Buddhists, have fled Burma in the tens of thousands in recent years.

Since Australia’s now-ousted Labor government decided in July to prevent refugees traveling by sea from landing in Australia—saying that would-be arrivals would be taken to processing centers in neighboring Nauru and Papua New Guinea (PNG)—some Rohingya who had hopes of making it to Australia are now in a bind.

“We are disappointed, we feel like we are stuck,” said Zafar Ahmad Abdul Ghani, president of the Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organization Malaysia (MERHOM). “Many of us do not have papers here [in Malaysia] and we have no status in Burma. It is a difficult situation for anyone who hoped to travel to Australia,” Ahmad told The Irrawaddy.  [To “travel” or make an illegal run for Australian shores!—ed]

Thousands of Rohingya refugees undertake a treacherous maritime journey from western Burma to Thailand or Malaysia. From there some in turn hope to reach Australia, usually attempting another dangerous maritime crossing through the Indian Ocean.

[…..]

Rohingya arrivals to Australia are difficult to quantify, as those who do make it are listed as “stateless” by Australia, while some others who arrived in Australia over recent years claimed to be Rohingya but were assessed by Australia to be either Bangladeshi nationals or Burmese Muslims, according to Chris Lewa.  [I suspect that those Rohingya getting into the US through refugee resettlement are being referred to as Burmese Muslims as well, since the word ‘Rohingya’ is associated with some pretty rough types.—ed]

Australian government statistics—covering the years from 1998 to 2012—list 2,204 stateless maritime arrivals to Australia, a cohort that includes Kurds, Palestinians and Rohingya.

The boat people issue became a major election issue as immigration restrictionist Tony Abbott was elected as the new Prime Minister last month.

A voter backlash against the arrival of over 40,000 asylum seekers since 2007, when policy was relaxed for a time, prompted both of Australia’s main parties to suggest tighter controls.

I found this bit of the story of interest too:

Indonesia is a common transit point for refugees trying to reach Australia, Rohingya included. At least 28 Middle Eastern migrants drowned when a boat, which was aiming to reach Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, sank off Indonesia in late September.

Note they are simply referred to generically as ‘Middle Eastern’ migrants with no mention that they were Lebanese pretending to be Syrian refugees as our commenter ‘pungentpeppers’ reported here.

The photo is from this story about a UNHCR meeting in June.  In a cursory search I can’t find a specific website for Lewa’s Arakan Project, lots of references to Lewa and the status of the Project as an NGO, but no website.  if any industrious readers find one, let us know!